Historian Mary Beard on ‘Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves’

Aretha Franklin and the Eurythmics make a point—and a hit

Mary Beard, 60, is an award-winning author and professor of classics at Cambridge University. Her latest book is “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome” (Liveright). She spoke with Marc Myers.

In 1984 I returned to Newnham College at Cambridge University to teach after completing my Ph.D. there a couple of years earlier. Almost all of my colleagues in the university’s classics department were men, and my office at the all-women’s college was in the dorm. That’s where I first heard “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” by the...